Today I am a host for the Blog Tour of The Space Between by Susan Rooke. This Blog Tour is coordinated by iRead Book Tours
PUBLISHER: Holyoke Press
DATE PUBLISHED: 12th September 2017
PAGES: 435
BLURB:
Mellis, a courageous and resourceful young woman, is kidnapped from the human world and taken to the Space Between by a tribe of faeries called the Penitents. Because of guilt over an ancient sin committed by their angel ancestors against the Maker, the Penitents have cursed themselves with grotesque physical disfigurements. Mellis can help them reunite with the Maker and find their way back to redemption, but she would need to give up the life she’s always known to remain in the Space Between. As she struggles with this heart-wrenching decision, one of the Penitents, bent on revenge, commits a gruesome attack against the tribe, and they learn he has taken Satan—the Maker’s greatest enemy—as his ally. All in the Space Between are facing grave danger. Will a long-awaited act of vengeance save them?
REVIEW:
An epic fantasy full of magical and mythical creatures that simply take your breath away. The beginning of the book leaves the reader with so many questions that they are hooked from the absolute start. The world building really set this book apart. Set in a world apart from ours that is so vivid I felt that I was truly there. The characters are engaging and utterly three dimensional. There was real motivation there that drove the characters through the plot of the book. There is so much happening in this novel that at times I felt I had gotten lost and needed to backtrack to fully comprehend what was happening. Overall, this book really hooked me in from the very start. There were times that I felt the book became confusing or a little slow, but this was only a little issue that was overshadowed by the character dynamics and the stunning world-building.
🌟🌟🌟🌟
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Susan Rooke is a Pushcart-nominated poet and author of the forthcoming The Space Between Series. Her short stories and poems have appeared in publications such as The Christian Science Monitor and The Twilight Zone Magazine, among many others. She resides on a square of green, peaceful country not far from Austin, Texas, with her husband Glen, who runs a small cattle operation while Rooke writes fiction about angels and demons, monsters, faeries and dragons. Look for her fantasy novel, The Space Between: The Prophecy of Faeries on Amazon.
AUTHOR INTERVIEW:
Q. The subtitle of your book is The Prophecy of Faeries. Do you make a distinction between “faeries” and “fairies”?
A. No. “Faeries” is just an alternate spelling. I prefer it because “fairies” often seems to make people think of the Tinker Bell sort, which are very different from the kind of faery I write about.
Q. The Penitent faery tribe who kidnap Mellis have cursed themselves with some extreme physical disfigurements. Where did your inspiration for these characters come from?
A. One day a couple of weeks before I began writing the first draft, I was walking on the treadmill while reading a fascinating bargain book from Barnes & Noble. Can’t remember the title, but it was an inclusive list of the physical abnormalities documented in human beings. There were some surprising ones I’d never heard about before, and as I was reading, the idea struck me that I needed to write about a population of faeries challenged in this way.
Q. Your book’s characters range from heroic to abominable. Are there any that you truly disliked or that you were uncomfortable writing about?
A. Nope, not one! It’s said that authors put a little of themselves into every character they write. It was certainly true for me. Even the character of Satan has a little of me in his makeup.
Q. What do you do to prepare for the day’s writing? Is there a routine you use to get yourself into the “zone”?
A. There is. Before I start to write, I spend 15 or 20 minutes reading speculative fiction. It doesn’t have to be fantasy, but there must be fantastical elements. It’s a sort of 5-finger exercise for my brain and gets it warmed up. Right now (while working on Book 2 in the series) I’m reading Children of the Night, by Dan Simmons.
Q. Do you write anything besides fiction?
A. Yes, I write poetry which has appeared in a number of journals and anthologies, and been nominated for several Pushcarts and a Best of the Net. Also, in May 2016 I started writing personal essays as blog posts for my website, http://susanrooke.net.
Q. What was some of your favorite reading in childhood?
A. I’ve always loved fantasy, starting with L. Frank Baum’s Oz books and Hugh Lofting’s Doctor Dolittle series, then moving on to the magic of C.S. Lewis’s Narnia. I read James Thurber’s The 13 Clocks so many times I knew it by heart.
Q. What is your next project?
A. I’ve been working on Book 2 in The Space Between series, and I’m about 95,000 words into it, or about three-fourths done. It’s titled The Realm Below: The Rise of Tanipestis, and it picks up soon after the first book leaves off. The Titan Tanipestis has been busy in the power vacuum left in the wake of Satan’s absence from the Realm Below!
GIVEAWAY:
Win a paperback or ebook copy of The Space Between with the possibility of a $25 Amazon GC and swag! (28 winners total, open to USA only except for ebooks which are open to be won internationally)
If you would like to enter this giveaway, click here.
Keep Calm and Read On,
Kati
To Be Read 